Hair clips or barrettes are customarily provided with an esthetically pleasing base structure which is exposed to the observer and may have an esthetically pleasing pattern, design, coloration or the like. Such base elements are frequently molded from synthetic resin material and are formed at one end, on the reverse or unexposed side, with a hinge to which a wire clip member is secured, the free end of this member comprising a pair of spreadable wire shanks or legs which are thrust over a retaining body secured to the reverse side of the base at the other end thereof. The inherent resiliency of the clip member causes the two legs to straddle this retainer until the user draws the clip member over the retainer in the opposite direction to release the barrette.
The clip member is thus constituted as an arm hinged at one end and formed from a spring metal wire which is closed to form a complete but elongated loop. In other words, the ends of the wire are bent to form the pintle of the hinge while the bight of the wire remote from the hinge connects a pair of shanks or legs which can be forced over the retainer to straddle a neck thereof.
The retainer which holds the arm in its closed position can be a locking ball or bulbous member fixed to the body or base of the barrette and projecting from the rear surface thereof so that the legs of the arm can be forced over the large portion or head of this member to ultimately straddle the neck. Traditionally, this type of retainer has been made by die-stamping or swaging a metal piece of limited thickness. The head is thus formed as a hollow member with a central cavity and associated openings.
This method of fabricating the retaining member is not compatible with modern automatic feed processes for machines adapted to produce barrettes and the like by mass production modes of operation. For example, such hollow sheet metal structures tend to jam in the feed slides because of the penetration of a part of one retainer into an opening in the other. Finally, in this connection, mention must be made of the fact that die-stamping techniques of the type hitherto used for producing such small elements have not been able to fabricate them with the desired degree of precision or accuracy, i.e. with very precise dimensions. Such precision is desired where the retaining member must be very small for fine products.